


Tomorrow Is A Rest Day

by Confrog



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Dark, Extended Universe, Gen, Omnics, Origin Story, Post-Fall of Overwatch, TW - Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-02-27 11:51:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13247667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Confrog/pseuds/Confrog
Summary: Life for ZN-22 is routine, working day in and day out, but things are about to change...Not all beginnings are pretty.





	1. Chapter 1

   A small blip on his optic loadout told ZN-22 that his allotted charging period was up. He reached up and deactivated the screen on the inside lid of the coffin above him, noting the page number in his memory banks of the book he’d been reading, A Study in Scarlet, from a Sherlock Holmes collection he'd just purchased. Most of the workers at his plant just went into low-power mode while they got back to their charging coffins, but ZN-22 liked to keep his optics activated so he could read. Sure, he could have downloaded an indexed version directly into his memory banks, but after the first few books he tried this way he quickly decided that he didn’t like that as much as perusing the virtual pages on a screen. It felt more real than accessing something in his memory banks, it became an experience rather than a pure data file. It was inefficient but he didn’t care; what else was he using his storage space for?

   ZN-22 flipped the switch on the inside of the coffin lid, and the coffin’s hydraulics made a slight hissing sound as they started to push the lid open. With a shudder, the lid came to a halt after opening roughly six inches, letting out a long, slow hissing noise like someone squeezing the air out of an inflatable snake. ZN-22 sighed, and wriggled around in the partially-opened coffin so that he could push with both hands against the coffin lid and not break the interior display screen. After a minute of struggling with it, he managed to open the coffin far enough to squeeze out and drop onto the walkway, his optics taking a second to adjust to the low lighting from the bright glow of the coffin’s interior screen. Technically, they were called charging pods, but ZN-22 had started referring to them as coffins after a spate of reading Poe, followed by Bradbury and Gibson.

   As his optics took in the surroundings, he saw that he was alone on the iron-grate walkway, the clank of his feet hitting the bars beneath them echoing around him. He was in a different sector of the charging facility than usual, his favorite coffin had been under maintenance when he got in from his shift so he’d been forced to find another one. A timer in the edge of his optical loadout counted down to the factory shuttle’s departure, just under five minutes left. He walked briskly towards the stairwell, then began to go down the stairs two at a time. He’d forgotten to calculate how long it took him to get from this alternate charging coffin to the facility’s entrance, and he was fairly certain that if he didn’t hurry that the shuttle was going to leave without him. One flight of stairs blurred into the next and the next as he began to almost leap down the stairs three or four at a time, the timer in the corner of his vision counting down to two minutes until departure as he passed a spray-painted number on the wall reading “4”. A few moments later, he passed a similarly-marked “3”; his olfactory sensors began to pick up an unusual synthetic smell, giving him less than a second for his optics to take in the omnic lying on the stairway in front of him in a spreading pool of its own internal lubricant. He could only watch as his foot hit the next step and slipped, sending his whole body into a wild slide down the remaining steps in the flight. He came to an abrupt halt as he slammed sideways into the concrete wall of the stairwell, his optics flickering for a moment before going black.

 

* * *

 

   ZN-22’s optic sensors flashed once, then twice before finally coming on and filling the darkened stairwell with a soft blue glow. As his system began running automatic damage calculations, ZN-22 convulsed for a second, all of his motors and joints activating at once to test for any structural weaknesses. Once he had regained control of all his limbs, he began to feel the back of his cranial casing for any dents or cracks, but luckily all he could find were surface dings and scratches from the rough surface of the concrete. His internal clock in the corner of his vision said that is was 16:15, with the timer underneath it flashing red and counting upwards: - 5:31.27. He’d been out of commission for close to seven minutes and missed the first shuttle. He pushed himself to his feet, wobbling slightly as the lubricant residue still on his feet made it hard to balance for a second. The only thing showing up on his internal damage report was a slight malfunction in his right elbow joint, but that could be looked at later when he could afford a trip to the Shop; right now he barely had enough V-Bucks in his account to pay his coffin fees after the last collection of ebooks he’d purchased.

   ZN-22 leaned against the cool concrete wall as he ran the calculations on how long it would take him to get to the factory at this rate: he could catch the next shuttle and be there only 20 minutes late for his shift. Maybe they wouldn’t have fired him by then, this was his first offense against the tardiness policy. He carefully righted himself and began to walk down the stairs, taking care to scrape his feet on the edge of each step to get some of the lubricant off. By the time he made it to the facility’s entrance, the second shuttle was already idling in front of the building, the soft hum of its repulsors holding it steadily off the ground with next to no fluctuation in height. ZN-22 took the last few strides at a near-run until he hit the gridiron steps onto the shuttle, slowing down as he entered to swipe his proximity pass against the shuttle’s reader. He paused for a moment, waiting to hear the dreaded beeping noise that meant he didn’t have enough V-Bucks for the trip, but after a few seconds of without any response from the card-reader, it flashed green and he climbed the rest of the steps up onto the shuttle.

   The crowd on the shuttle was different from the usual one ZN-22 rode with. As he made his way down the crowded aisle, he could see omnics with large dents and scratches in their exterior plating, others with mismatched replacement limbs. A group of them near the back seemed to be wearing scavenged-looking human sweatshirts with holes in them, the hoods drawn up over their heads. He squeezed between a pair of particularly dented omnics, pushing his way towards one of the handrails as he heard the shuttle’s repulsor-hum shift and felt it begin to move forwards. He gripped the handrail as one of the omnics next to him shifted its stance, pressing him uncomfortably between it and his neighbor behind him. He could barely see out of the shuttle’s grimy windows as the outskirts of London passed by in the distance, the shuttle winding its way through the narrow streets between the charging facility and the factory itself.

   As the shuttle began to slow, ZN-22 could see the lights of the factory through the perpetual smog surrounding it, the rest of the omnics on the shuttle with him beginning to shuffle towards the door. He found himself being pushed along by the crowd, pushed back and forth between clusters of other omnics until he found himself in the midst of the hoodie-wearing omnics at the back of the bus as they descended the shuttle’s steps down onto the asphalt. The group pushed forward once they hit the ground, pulling him along with them at a rapid pace, almost carrying him between them as he began to lose his balance and grabbed onto them so he wouldn’t be trampled.The group slowed as they made it to the factory’s entrance, allowing ZN-22 to regain his feet; as he attempted to straighten up while grabbing onto the surrounding omnics as little as possible, he accidentally placed his hand on the torso region of one of the hoodie-wearing omnics that had rushed him off of the shuttle and felt something shift beneath his hand, accompanied by the sound of tearing. The entire group went still as whatever he’d put his hand on started to slip and move down the hoodie-wearing omnic’s torso, prompting it to grab at the lump with both hands to keep it from sliding out from under the hoodie. Suddenly the group closed in on him, grabbing him from all sides as they shoved forward, sending omnics sprawling left and right as several of them drew small automatic weapons and began opening fire at the human security personnel at the factory’s entrance. ZN-22 found himself grappled from behind and hauled along with the group as the crowd started to scatter around him and the armed omnics holding onto him, gunfire ringing out through the smog as security started firing back at the intruders. He felt a bullet ricochet off of his cranial casing, filling his optics with danger warnings; the group pushed forward even faster, several of them falling away from the group itself as they progressed to establish an offensive line. He was thrown the ground a few feet from the factory entrance, one of the hoodie-wearing omnics tearing open its sweatshirt to reveal blocks of C4 explosives as it charged towards the security gate. Moments later, a loud sound triggered just outside of ZN-22’s optical range, and what felt like a colossal hand of force batted him into the air. He spun through the air for a serene moment before colliding with the side of the shuttle, leaving a dent where he’d impacted and shunting the whole shuttle back a few inches. All of his sensory inputs began to sputter, sending inconsistent data to his processor as lights flashed all around him and the sound of sirens began to wail in the distance. The last thing he saw amongst the growing chaos before his his emergency shutdown protocols activated was a large hover-vehicle passing over him, its repulsors trying to flatten him as it travelled past, and the sounds of boots hitting the ground as the vehicle began to disgorge uniformed humans who opened fire towards the factory.


	2. Chapter 2

   The first thing ZN-22 felt was a jolt of electricity at the base of his spinal support column. His processor jumped to life, making his optics flicker to life and emit a dull blue glow under the harsh lighting of a single powerful beam of light coming down from the ceiling. As his processor began to function, he looked around to get an idea of his surroundings but found that he was inside a column of light, so blinding that his optics were unable to adjust to the darkness in the rest of the room. His tactile sensors began to kick in as well, and he realized that he was strapped to some sort of metal frame, and that someone was messing around with the wiring at the base of his spinal column.

   “That should do it, sir,” said a female voice behind him, presumably belonging to the person who was replacing an exterior panel that should have be covering his spinal support column. “I’ve bypassed the emergency shutdown protocols in his– I mean its system. Wait a minute or two and it should be able to respond to your questioning.”

   Another voice grunted, this one in front of him, and replied roughly: “I don’t see why you can’t just download everything from his memory banks and just have done with it.”

   “Are you volunteering your time to perform real-time surveillance of however many years it’s been active worth of experiential data, lieutenant?” said a third voice, this one deep and resonant. “Thank you for your work, Addams, we’ll let you know if we have any problems you can help with.”

   ZN-22 heard the sounds of metal objects being packed up behind him, and then footsteps going off to his left; a rectangle of light opened on the wall, letting the silhouette of a human woman pass through before disappearing again.

   “Now,” said the deep voice from in front of him, “the lieutenant here has a few questions for you. I recommend that you answer promptly and precisely, because he is not a patient man.”

   Footsteps echoed through the dark room, the rectangle of light appearing again to allow the exit of a broad-shouldered silhouette. Once the rectangle disappeared, the sound of footsteps began again, moving in a circle around ZN-22 as his optics strained to make out any shapes in the darkness.

   “Let’s lay everything out on the table, shall we?” said the rough voice who had spoken second previously. “I don’t like robots, and the fact that we’re supposed to give them rights is sickening to me. Here in this room, you have no rights. I ask you questions, and you give me the answers I want. If you don’t, I’ll have to test how well your pain circuits work.”

   The footsteps completed their circuit around ZN-22, and then a thin, wiry-looking man with greying hair stepped forward into the pillar of light around ZN-22: “Now tell me everything you know about Null Sector.”

 

* * *

 

   ZN-22 screamed as raw voltage coursed through his body from the frame his straining limbs were locked to. He had no throat to be sore, but a flashing warning in the center of his optical loadout told him that his vocal emitters were deteriorating at a rapid rate due to the overload they were going through, so he could only assume that was as close as an omnic could get. The lieutenant stood in front of him, holding a small cylindrical handle with a long wire dangling from it and a red button on top. He held the button down for a few more seconds, taking in the aroma of melting plastics and superheated lubricants that had started to fill the room after the first few minutes of electrocution.

   “You know, I thought I wouldn’t enjoy this,” said the lieutenant, running a hand through his hair as he watched ZN-22’s body convulse for a few seconds after the electrical current had subsided. “I really didn’t, but it’s like those old circuits they used to use in electronic music back in the 1960’s. I get to listen to all the funny noises you make before you overload.”

   ZN-22 went limp against his restraints, every sensor in his metallic body blaring as his processor tried again and again to perform an emergency shutdown but always returned a failure to connect to power control. He didn’t know how long it had been at this point, all the surges of electricity had caused the timekeeping part of his internal memory to jump around crazily in its estimates of how long he’d been in the room.

   “You know the question, robot,” said the lieutenant, “where is Null Sector?”

   “I don’t know,” replied ZN-22, each word forcibly pushed out of his vocal emitters with tremendous effort. “The answer hasn’t changed.”

   “I don’t know why I bother,” said the lieutenant, dropping the activation switch to the ground with a clank. “Rest while you can, robot, I’ll be starting this up again tomorrow.”

   The lieutenant walked out of the column of light, his footsteps heading away from ZN-22 until the rectangle of light appeared again, showing the lieutenant’s silhouette for an instant as he passed through it. With a loud slamming sound, the column of light went out, leaving ZN-22 in complete darkness except for the faint glow of his optics.

 

* * *

 

 

   Minutes passed. Hours passed. The rest of ZN-22’s body slowly relaxed, the strain of his synthetic muscles on his joints leaving low-grade feedback from all over his body as his Heuristic Damage Indication receptors fired off. Warnings of overloaded systems scrolled past in his optic loadout. The exception to this low-grade feedback was his right arm: something was wrong with it, the H.D.I. receptors going full blast while his fingers refused to respond. Craning his neck, he saw something sparking around the vicinity of the elbow joint in that arm, easily visible in the inky darkness of the room. A few faint clicking noises caught his aural receptors, and he strained to pick up their origin as a slow hiss began to emanate from the vicinity of the door. A small beam of light shone into the room, revealing that the door had been partially opened, just enough for the shape behind the light source to crawl through. Even with his better-than-human night vision, ZN-22 could hardly make out the shape that entered the room, holding the light up in front of it and pointing in his direction.

   “Hello?” asked the shape, moving closer towards him cautiously. He recognized the voice from earlier, it sounded like the female voice who’d jump-started his systems earlier, before the lieutenant was given control of the room.

   “I do not think there is much to be afraid of from me,” replied ZN-22. “It is hardly as if I will be able to harm you.”

   ZN-22 moved his arms against the restraints, making them clank softly to emphasize his statement.

   “I guess not, but we still don’t have very long before the security footage loops I set up time out and we’re toast,” said the voice as she moved in close enough to ZN-22 for the light from her flashlight reflecting off of his body to illuminate her face. She was a slight woman, with wild, curly red hair pulled back into a rough ponytail at the base of her head that failed to hold many of the strands that had escaped to create a frizzy halo around her face in the illumination of her flashlight.

   The woman started rummaging through a small satchel at her side, pulling out some thin metal picks from it and moving towards ZN-22. She clipped the small, rectangular flashlight to her chest and reached up with the picks towards him. He pulled away from her as far as his restraints allowed as the picks neared his face, restraining an involuntary whine as he feared she was going to take over where the lieutenant had left off, only more intimately.

   “Oh, I- I’m not going to hurt you,” said the woman as she saw ZN-22 pulling away from her. “I- just give me a second and I’ll have you off this rack, ok?”

   The woman reached past his face with the picks, stretching up as far as she could to reach his wrists in the metal restraints up above his head. After about a minute, the restraint on his right wrist popped open after a series of faint clicking noises, letting his arm fall to his side and relieving the strain on his shoulder socket. He tried moving his fingers on that arm again, with no success; he could bend the arm at the elbow, but everything below that was unresponsive and sending back a constant string of H.D.I. signals. As he tested his right arm, the cuff on his left also popped open as the woman finished using the picks on the locking mechanism.

   “I’ve been watching the observation feed from this room off and on all day, and Lieutenant Kaiman didn’t let his finger off the electrical surge button for more than a few seconds at a time,” said the woman as she moved onto the ankle cuffs with her picks. “I had some suspicions as to what it might be like when I was transferred from General Intelligence to Omnic Investigations, but I had no idea it was going to be this bad.”

   Click. Click. Click.

   “We can’t treat omnics like this, not even Bastion units,” said the woman, popping open the right ankle cuff and starting on the left. “You’re as much people as anyone else; I’ve watched them do things to you today that would have killed a human outright, and… Well… I just decided that was it. I’m not going to stand by and watch as we treat omnics like pieces of metal and circuitry. I guess this is my resignation notice.”

   The woman straightened up after she finished the left cuff on his ankle, pushing back the stray frizz that was getting in her eyes. ZN-22 fell forward from the rack, landing on all fours with a loud clank that seemed to echo around the room. The woman’s eyes widened at the sound, and she quickly knelt down next to him, flicking off the flashlight as the last reverberations of the sound died away. A few moments passed in near silence, ZN-22 straining to pick up any sounds besides the quick breathing of the woman next to him.

   “I think we got lucky,” said the woman, straining to see anything in the faint glow of ZN-22’s optics. “Ok, so all we have to do now is make it out of the back entrance to this building and a few streets out, then we’ll be home free.”

   “What then?” asked ZN-22, looking at the woman as he slowly made his way back to his feet.

   “I’ve got a van waiting there that I’ll drive as far west as I can,” she replied. “I figure if I drop you off somewhere in Wales that’ll make it hard enough to find you that you’ll be able to make do. I’ve got relatives in- well, on the west coast that I can stay with for a while.”

   “But I-” started ZN-22, but changed his mind about protesting. “Thank you. Who knows how long I would have been incarcerated here without your intervention.”

   “Don’t thank me yet,” replied the woman, checking a digital readout on her watch. “We don’t have that long to get out of here.”

   The woman rose to her feet next to ZN-22, pulling out an old flip-style cell phone and turning it on. She fiddled with it, opening the dialer and plugging in a number, only to hesitate with her thumb over the dial button; she looked at ZN-22, as if searching for the answer to a question he could only guess at. Finally, she shook her head like she was trying to shake loose a cobweb from her hair, and pressed the dial button. After a few seconds, a deep bass note thrummed through the building, and the faint scent of shorted-out electronics began to fill the air.

   “Follow me,” said the woman, dropping the phone and moving to the door to pry it the rest of the way open. “That E.M.P. pulse should black out their systems long enough for us to make it outside, but that doesn’t mean we won’t run into the night shift on their way into the building if we don’t hurry.”

   After sticking her head out into the hallway and looking both directions, she gestured to ZN-22 and stepped out of the doorway, starting to move at a swift jog. ZN-22 did his best to keep up, his footsteps rapidly clanking on the linoleum floors as she sped up, almost skidding around corners as she turned left, then right, then left again. The fire door made a loud banging sound as she shouldered it open, barely slowing her stride as she led the way down the concrete staircase. ZN-22 took the stairs three at a time to keep her in sight as she darted through an open doorway at the bottom of the staircase. A cacophonous wailing noise burst from a speaker over the doorway as the woman shoved open a red door to the outside world.

   “Fuck!” exclaimed the woman, coming to a halt just outside the door. “I forgot that the emergency systems would have a backup built in. Shit, shit, shit!”

   The woman grabbed ZN-22’s arm and pulled him forward down the alley they had emerged into, breaking into a dead sprint that hauled him nearly off his feet. They ran for a few blocks at this pace, the wailing alarms behind them growing fainter with each alley they turned into and dashed down until they came to a skidding stop in front of a dinged-up van. The van was probably once white, but time had taken its toll on the paint job and likely on the rest of the vehicle as well. The woman dug into her jacket pocket, pulled out a set of keys and fumbled with them for a few seconds before finding the right one. She jammed the key into the door-lock and yanked the door itself open, throwing herself into the driver’s seat and pressing a button that opened the van’s side door.

   “Get in, get in!” shouted the woman, waving her hand in ZN-22’s direction as the started the van’s engine, causing its repulsors cough and rumble to life.

   ZN-22 tumbled headlong into the back of the van, sliding backwards through discarded crisp bags and sweets wrappers until he collided with the van’s back wall as it jumped forward. The woman floored the van’s accelerator and the rumble of its repulsors raised in pitch, adding a whine to the din of noises coming from it as they darted out into the London traffic and off into the night.


	3. Chapter 3

   The van’s repulsors coughed and sputtered, making the van jerk up and down a few times.

   “No, no, no,” said the red-haired woman, laying her hand on the dash like she was feeling someone’s forehead. “Hold out for me, come on, just a few more kilometers.”

   ZN-22 grabbed onto the side of the van’s stripped-out interior with his left hand as it jerked a few more times, sending small bursts to his H.D.I. receptors from his metal posterior as he was bounced off the metal floor. This in and of itself barely registered for him, because the H.D.I. signals from his right arm were still off the charts. He’d tried disabling his right arm entirely like they would at a body shop when they were going to work on it, but whatever the woman had done to the wiring in his spinal support column meant that he couldn’t override the hardwired input and output coming from it. He winced as he flexed the malfunctioning arm, hearing a further sparking noise coming from his elbow joint, followed by a spike in the H.D.I. signals coming from it as his right hand spasmed like a dying spider before going stiff again.

   The van’s interior was entirely bare, except for the driver’s seat, the dashboard, and the dials behind the wheel. It looked like there had been a back seat at one point, but they appeared to have been cut out with a rough power tool, leaving behind sharp metal edges that had been partially hammered down. Trash covered the floor, everything from food wrappers to parts of circuitry to what looked like part of an omnic face-plate. ZN-22 picked up the curved piece of metal, its once chromed surface now scratched and scuffed horribly. He flipped it over, and found a few wires dangling from a partial optical receptor still attached there.

   “Should I be concerned?” he asked, holding up the face-plate so that the woman could see it.

   “I-- oh bugger,” she swore, quickly yanking her eyes back to the road so she didn’t make the van swerve any more than she just had. “Look, I swear I pulled that out of the dumpster behind Omnic Investigations headquarters. It was part of a partial omnic shell they’d deposited there. I disconnected the head and took it so I could try to datamine its memory banks for conclusive proof that it had been tortured.”

   She sighed, keeping her eyes locked on the highway as she continued: “I have a few contacts in the Omnic Rights movement, so I thought if I could get them a recording or at least a transcript they’d be able to use it as proof that Omnic Investigations was in violation of the Gibson Act. I swear I’m one of the good guys here, not some sort of omnic-hunting serial killer- wow that sounded suspicious.”

   The woman shook her head, not looking back at ZN-22 as she drove. The van jerked again, and she swore. Quickly checking for traffic, she turned sharply across two lanes and over onto the exit ramp for the A419 North.

   “It looks like we’re going to have to ditch the van sooner than I’d like, and probably leave you wherever it ends up,” she said, following the turn of the roundabout. “I’m hoping we can make it to Pontyclun, I can hop a train there to-- you know… the place I’m going. You can’t get on a train looking like you do, but even if you could you’d pop up on a security scanner in an instant. They’ve probably got an A.P.B. out on you by now, and also on me for that fact. Pass me that duffel would you?”

   ZN-22 looked around and found a black duffel bag to his right near the back of the van. He reached for it with his right hand, then remembered it wasn’t working as his motionless fingers collided with the side of the bag. He reached across himself and grabbed the bag, moving it to the space where the passenger’s seat would be normally so the woman could reach it. She reached down for it without looking as the van merged onto the A419, fumbling for the zipper with one hand but managing to open it after a few seconds of struggling. She fished around inside the bag and her hand emerged holding a blonde wig.

   “I’ve got my disguise planned out,” said the woman, her voice apologetic, “but it’s a lot harder to disguise a serial number from a security scan… If you dig around in there, you’ll find a roll of notes that should run about a couple hundred pounds if I counted them correctly. I don’t know how long that’ll last, but since you don’t exactly need food or anything…”

   The woman’s voice trailed off as the van drove through the night, its headlights flickering from time to time. ZN-22 dug through the duffel bag and found the roll of notes, rubber-banded together like drug money. This was probably the most real money he’d ever touched at one time, or even over the course of his entire life up until now.

   “Oh, and remember: you can’t use a normal omnic charging station any more,” said the woman, matter-of-factly. “Those things feed your serial number into a government database, and the D.O.I. will be on you in a heartbeat as soon as you jack in. There’s probably some sort of gas station or pub with a universal power feed that doesn’t feed back into a networked system you can use if you pay them enough. You should also shut down your wireless connection now as well if you haven’t, your serial number would throw up red flags as soon as you connected to an open network.”

   ZN-22 held the roll of money in his hand, staring down at it as the woman continued into a further list of things he shouldn’t do in order to stay off the grid. What was next for him? There wasn’t really a way to get his arm repaired without giving away his location, but even then he doubted he could afford it, much less the hush money he would need to throw in to keep from being discovered. Without his right arm, not many places would be willing to hire him on for labor, especially if he wanted to be paid in cash, so getting more money was almost entirely out of the question. He pulled up his internal battery levels in his optic readout; according to his system estimate, he had three more days before he would shut down, barring any strenuous activity that would cause a spike in power usage.

   The woman paused, hesitating to say something after her long list of survival tips came to an end. She glanced at the duffel bag next to ZN-22 and seemed to be calculating something.

   “Hey, so...” she started, then paused. She spoke again, her voice quaking slightly with emotion: “There’s a laptop in that bag you can have as well, along with its charger and stuff. You’re probably going to need it more than I will. Take care of it, please? It’s the last piece of equipment I have left that I haven’t dismantled from my time back at Overwatch.”

   ZN-22 reached back into the duffel bag and found a laptop-sized rectangle swaddled in an old green sweatshirt. He sat the bundle on his lap and unfolded the sweatshirt carefully, revealing a metallic orange laptop with rounded corners. The back of it was covered in stickers for bands that he’d never heard of and organizations that seemed to be tech-startups. Underneath a sticker in the center of the laptop, he could see the faint outline of the Overwatch logo slightly recessed into the laptop’s shell. He traced his fingers over the covered logo, his data banks pulling up everything he knew about the organization.

   “They fought in the Omnic Crisis if I remember correctly,” said ZN-22. “Did you fight?”

   “Hardly,” replied the woman with a laugh, “I was a technician and programmer who worked in Research and Development under Winston. Best job I ever had, even if Winston was a bit of a micromanager. He just knew so much about everything that he always had an input of some sort for us.”

   Another cough from the van’s repulsors caused it to bounce violently, cutting the woman off before she could say anything else.

   “Come on you piece of shite,” she swore, thumping the steering wheel as though that would make it better. “I’m hoping we’re going to make it to Pontyclun, because I can hop a train west from there to get to-- you know, where I’m going.”

   ZN-22 looked out of the window at the mostly-empty highway, illuminated by the van’s weak headlights. A deep thrumming made the van vibrate as a semi passed them, making him grab onto the van’s interior as it bounced yet again.

   “I think the repulsors on the semi trucks are causing an issue with the van,” said ZN-22, “but I am hardly an expert on such things.”

   The woman swore again, shaking her head in frustration: “I knew the van’s repulsors were starting to go, but there was no way to know that the frequency of the other vehicles’ repulsors would cause counter-resonations in the van’s. I remember Winston trying to design something that would do just that, interfere with repulsors, but he abandoned it when it turned out to be the size of a truck.”

   “Conveniently so,” replied ZN-22 with no change in his tone to indicate sarcasm or humor.

   The woman shifted awkwardly in the driver’s seat as silence filled the van. ZN-22 didn’t mind the silence, it made it easier to ignore the H.D.I. signals radiating from his damaged arm. It still strobed with the signals, but it was a little less insistent than before when the woman was talking. He silenced the input from his optical receptors and enjoyed the darkness, filled only with the inconstant hum of the van’s faulty repulsors. He could get used to this…

   The silence stretched on for a few minutes, ZN-22 enjoying the almost tranquil peace falling over him, when the van’s repulsors coughed and sputtered, throwing him sideways onto the floor and sliding him face first into the van’s back doors. He struggled to flip himself back over as the van began to shake and bounce uncontrollably, the hum of the repulsors becoming a high-pitched whine. The woman swore vehemently, yanking left on the steering wheel, trying to pull the dying van off onto the shoulder of the road before it gave up the ghost. The van shuddered once more, and with one final upward bounce, crashed to the ground, skidding and scraping along the asphalt and pebbles along the side of the road. ZN-22 floated in the air for a second as the van went down, then slammed back to the floor as gravity caught up with him, bouncing his head against the metal of the van’s interior. He looked up to see the woman pulling herself upright in the driver’s seat, massaging her shoulder where it looked like the seatbelt had held her in place and kept her from his fate of banging around the van like an omnic pinball.

   The van’s headlights flickered once, then twice, then went out entirely, leaving the two of them alone in the darkness, except for the soft blue glow of ZN-22’s optics barely illuminating the interior of the van.

   “Bugger,” swore the woman, reaching into the duffel bag that had landed near her in the van’s death throes and pulling out the little clip-on flashlight she had used at the D.O.I. headquarters. The flashlight clicked on and provided enough light for ZN-22 to see her face, tired-looking and still a little shocked. She pulled out her phone, flicking and tapping her way through to a GPS map.

   “Well, we’re only a few miles out from Pontyclun,” said the woman, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “Guess we’re on foot for the rest of the way.”

   ZN-22 righted himself, shaking his head to try and clear all the danger warnings from his optic loadout.

   “I suppose a little bit further tonight will not hurt us too badly,” he replied as the H.D.I. signals flowed in from all over his frame. “I think I can walk. Are you injured?”

   “Just a few bruises here and there, nothing serious,” said the woman, unclipping her seatbelt and rubbing her shoulder again. “I knew I got this van for too cheap, but I was hoping it would at least make it to-- places.”

   The woman opened the driver’s side door and climbed out, then turned and pulled on the handle to the back door of the van, which didn’t move. After a few minute of pulling and some pushing from the inside by ZN-22, the door swung open and cool night air flowed across his face. The woman’s breath made clouds of vapor as she breathed heavily, flexing her fingers to loosen the joints after all the pulling.

   “If we follow the road, it should take us into the center of Pontyclun,” said the woman, putting her hands into her pockets as the cold air began to take its toll on her. “Shall we?”

   ZN-22 nodded before pausing to reach back into the van to retrieve the duffel bag and the laptop, handing the bag to her. The woman grabbed the sweatshirt that had been wrapped around the laptop and pulled it on, letting out a sigh of relief,  the fleece beginning to warm her up again as she rubbed her arms with her hands. ZN-22 held the laptop to his chest with his good arm like a small child, almost cradling it. Soon it would be all he had left, as they began the long walk towards town, the night wind moaning softly through the trees...

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for giving this a read, I will continue to post chapters as I write them.
> 
> I'm working with only minimal editing, so if there's anything glaring in terms of grammar or spelling errors please let me know.
> 
> If you liked it, please leave me a comment or kudos, or even both! *shocked gasp*


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